The disclosed embodiments relate to techniques for switching between graphics sources to drive a display in a computer system. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to a buffering technique that facilitates switching between graphics sources to drive a display without a visible interruption.
To operate without interruption, computer displays require a constant video stream from a graphics source. However, a modern computer system often drives a display from different graphics sources. For example, a computer system may include multiple graphics processing units (GPUs), which provide differing levels of graphics-processing performance and consume different amounts of power. This enables the computer system to switch a display between different GPUs in a manner that balances changing graphics-processing requirements and power consumption. Unfortunately, video streams from the different graphics sources are not necessarily synchronized with each other, and the process of starting up a graphics source can take some time. As a consequence, the process of switching between different graphics sources can cause user-visible display glitches.
Hence, what is needed is a technique that facilitates driving a display using different graphics sources without the above-described problems.